Student dorms and apartments will be bustling next week as students prepare to move out for the summer. Discarded pieces of furniture line the streets of Westwood because students are unable to sell or transport their belongings.
Furnish the Homeless is a student-run program at UCLA that collects and transports furniture from UCLA students to people who have been homeless and are moving to temporary homes in Los Angeles, said Kian Asanad, a fourth-year biology student.
Kian Asanad, his brother Samuel Asanad, a UCLA alumnus from the class of 2012, and Amir Hakimi, a second-year neuroscience student, founded the organization in the fall. The group currently has 10 members.
The Asanad brothers came up with the idea to establish the group when they moved out of the dormitories in 2011.
“When I first moved out to the apartments from dorming in my third year, we started seeing furniture on the streets,” Kian Asanad said. “I was very confused. I didn’t know why this was here.”
Upon seeing the dumped couches, tables, desks and other household items on the street, the three realized that some of the furniture was in good condition and could still be put to use.
“It was a shame that (the furniture was) being thrown into the street,” Hakimi said. “We started talking about how it would be a really good idea to donate the furniture but we didn’t really know who would find it necessary.”
After doing some research, the group’s founders learned about transitional housing, where people who are unemployed and homeless are given temporary housing for 24 months, Hakimi said.
Oftentimes, these apartments come unfurnished, he said.
“We thought it would be a great idea to take the furniture that students don’t want and give it to people who actually need that,” he said.
Members of Furnish the Homeless worked with the Los Angeles Mission, a non-profit faith-based organization that works with homeless individuals, to host a furniture drive during winter quarter this year.
UCLA students volunteered to donate their furniture by signing up for a slot on the Furnish the Homeless website. Members of the organization picked up the furniture from the students and then delivered it to a Los Angeles Mission warehouse. The Los Angeles Mission then delivered the furniture to the unfurnished homes.
“We filled up our truck in the first day,” Kian Asanad said. “It exceeded our expectations.”
The Undergraduate Students Association Council paid for the truck the students rented to pick up furniture, Kian Asanad said.
However, members of Furnish the Homeless said they were unsatisfied with its first furniture drive.
“We did not know who was actually receiving the furniture,” Samuel Asanad said. “We weren’t seeing the result of the work.“
Furnish the Homeless members will hold another furniture drive at the end of this quarter, but are doing things a little differently, Kian Asanad said. They will instead be collaborating with People Assisting the Homeless, a non-profit that helps people out of homelessness and helps them find jobs, said Kevin Polks, who runs a program within PATH.
For the second furniture drive, instead of transporting the furniture to a storehouse, the group will be working with PATH to deliver furniture from the apartments to the houses of people who were previously homeless.
Students have already started requesting that Furnish the Homeless come pick up their unneeded furniture at the end of this quarter. Members of the group have been promoting their work through flyers, Facebook posts and speeches in lectures.
Chad Crunelle, a graduate student in the Anderson School of Management, said he plans to donate furniture to the organization in the future.
“It is better than just throwing stuff in the trash and it allows students to make charitable contributions without any real effort on their part,” Crunelle said.
Samuel Asanad also hopes to get the UCLA community more involved with the group.
“I want it to be where the people in Furnish the Homeless are not just me, my brother and Amir and the other group members,” Samuel Asanad said. “I want everyone to be part of this project.”
